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Ineligible Music - an example

I have a small number of tunes that show as iCloud Status Ineligible for Apple Music library sync.


Most of them are duplicates in which one of the two shows as "Protected AAC audio file" and one shows as "Purchased AAC audio file" (iTunes Kind). If I try "Add to iCloud Music Library" status iCloud Status changes to Waiting then back to Ineligible. Many of the are pre 2009.


I read that:


A Purchased AAC file is what a Protected AAC file becomes when it's been upgraded to the iTunes Plus format. These files no longer have the DRM-based copy restrictions. All songs at the iTunes Store sold after April 2009 are in the DRM-free Purchased AAC audio file format.


Even after I delete the Protected AAC files, so there are no duplicates, the Purchased AAC files show as ineligible. If I 'upload to iCloud' I see "waiting" then ineligible.


PS. This question is similar to Ineligible songs - Apple Community but is more detailed.

Posted on Nov 15, 2022 1:21 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 15, 2022 6:41 PM

So after eliminating a few corrupted files the remaining 12 problem files show in iTunes as 6 purchased and 6 protected. When I actually inspect the files however all have the extension .m4p and when I try to convert a "purchased" file I get the message "could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats".


So there's something wrong somewhere -- I think they are all protected files. I suspect somewhere in the past 20 or so years files that I bought from iTunes moved out of Apple's catalog and were no longer available for sale. This triggered a bug in some version of Apple Match such that a "purchased" version was created but the "purchased" version was in fact identical to the "protected" (except the bug confused iTunes metadata).


So these are "protected" AAC that cannot match to anything in Apple's library. Normally this would result in an upload, but I suspect Apple doesn't allow uploads of "protected" files (since they are supposed to just match).


They can still be played, but they are otherwise in limbo. They are DRMd of course, so nothing I have access to will do the conversion.


It would be nice if Apple were to give me my money back ... but I suppose they work as well as they ever did. They just don't fit the modern model.

Similar questions

7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 15, 2022 6:41 PM in response to ed2345

So after eliminating a few corrupted files the remaining 12 problem files show in iTunes as 6 purchased and 6 protected. When I actually inspect the files however all have the extension .m4p and when I try to convert a "purchased" file I get the message "could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats".


So there's something wrong somewhere -- I think they are all protected files. I suspect somewhere in the past 20 or so years files that I bought from iTunes moved out of Apple's catalog and were no longer available for sale. This triggered a bug in some version of Apple Match such that a "purchased" version was created but the "purchased" version was in fact identical to the "protected" (except the bug confused iTunes metadata).


So these are "protected" AAC that cannot match to anything in Apple's library. Normally this would result in an upload, but I suspect Apple doesn't allow uploads of "protected" files (since they are supposed to just match).


They can still be played, but they are otherwise in limbo. They are DRMd of course, so nothing I have access to will do the conversion.


It would be nice if Apple were to give me my money back ... but I suppose they work as well as they ever did. They just don't fit the modern model.

Ineligible Music - an example

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